There I was, at another lawyers’ gathering, listening to yet another recitation about how AI will change everything from our legal rights to our socks. Halfway through, I realized: For once the conference room did not look as dreary as an anteroom of an oversized funeral home. This one was quite distinctive, with charcoal gray wooden paneling and tan fabric wall coverings framing clean shelves lighted in amber and displaying Japanese-style vases. I should have expected no less because I had been brought to the Nobu, the only five-star hotel in the West Loop neighborhood of Chicago.
- So impressed was I with this unexpected divergence from the banal, I did friends in town a favor by calling to say I would not be crashing in their spare room after all. Instead, I rolled my carry-on to the front desk, where I learned the hotel was a member of the Leading Hotels of the World — and, as luck would have it, I belong to their Leaders Club. This was obviously an invitation from providence to book a short stay. I rolled onward, into a “Zen Suite,” thereby detouring my business trip into an ad hoc experience of elegance.
- If that sounds self-indulgent, consider that business travel is not just tiring and professionally demanding. If what you are mostly doing is working somewhere other than home and maybe dining at restaurants you have not visited before, that is barely even what a travel writer would call travel — or trouble to write about. Being cut off from the familiar and having to look and sound your best while in a professional setting can also bring on a disquieting sense of loneliness, even in a crowded meeting room.
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Indoor pool at the Nobu Hotel Chicago the blue lights change to green and back. (Alan Behr/TNS)
Tribune News Service Finishing touches are applied to dishes at the open sushi kitchen at Nobu restaurant. (Alan Behr/TNS)
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